The growing use of cloud applications and services, by enterprise users and others, has resulted in sensitive data being stored in the cloud. As a result, data may be exposed to unauthorized access, e.g., by a malicious user who hacks into a cloud storage or other service or as a result of unintended “leakage” of data, such as from one cloud application, service, or user, to another one not intended or authorized to receive the data.
Existing mechanisms to protect data are limited typically to allowing application developers to implement a degree of protection over data determined by the developer as requiring protection, in a manner determined by the developer, and/or are limited to providing protection only to a subset of data or data types, e.g., only custom data fields.